She Lulls Me to Sleep
There are lots of stories made for children who don't go to bed early, probably bogeymen or monsters under your bed. You've probably outgrown such stories, and might have already found a laugh or two in its retelling. But there are some stories that I'd rather not laugh about, more so challenge it. I'm Patrick, 17 years old. People see me as someone who sleeps rather early in the night, around 9pm. I stay that way even if there were exams in the following day. They really don't get it. You should never procrastinate and do things late at night, because it's a lot stressful and bad for your health. But in my case, it's bad for my mind.
I was always a skeptic when it comes to ghosts. I'd usually invite my friends for a sleepover once every week just to exchange loads of ghost stories, though. We were such a fan of horror, until that night our friendship was shut for good.
We start horror films after dinner, around 6:30pm. Ghost hunting comes right after the film, around 8:00pm. We all bring a camera with a flash, and that was just about the only light source we have when we're in the location. We have a rule to not use flashlights before the activity is over. Lots of flashes on different parts of the location is usually what happens, with occasional screaming, running around and laughing our pants off. The nicely shot pictures are for our scrapbook, where we highlight good stories and good pictures, and most of all, scared faces during and after activities. We usually start ghost story sharing around 11pm. The one who has a story is free to volunteer and try to scare the others. After that is a good dusk's sleep.
Among us was the greatest scaredy cat I've ever been friends with. Her name was Kyla. She has always been a part of our group of friends, but she's always the first to chicken out of our horror activities. She had this weird habit of blanking out and humming something, but she swears that she doesn't have control of it. Horror films became an hour of looking at the floor or at a certain inanimate object close by. Horror stories became an album of Taylor Swift or sleeping. Ghost hunting, the least fruitful of our activities, became sitting on my couch waiting for me and the others to return. Typical Kyla moves. We can't blame her, though. She cries easily, no matter how much we comfort her. She keeps on saying "searching for stuff we don't fully understand might result attracting an uninvited guest." That gave us goosebumps the first time we heard it, but we got used to her being a killjoy. We like her that way, but we would have loved her if she joined and actually tried to face her fears, and also especially if she didn't sleep at the 10pm mark. She explained that it was urgent, and we kinda hurt her when she said she was such a killjoy. I knew back then that she was really hurt. I saw a glint in her eyes.
She slept so early, yet her large eyebags make it seem ironic.
One night, Kyla suddenly fully joined us in our activities, and we noticed she was finally trying to be brave. She was really cute with an intent but scared face, and we loved every single moment when she was facing the scary parts of our activities. And then the ghost hunting activity happened. She had her own camera too, and we were set to be guided by mere flashes in our school grounds. Our favorite teacher, Sir Sev, took the responsibility of watching over us in our supposedly off-limits school grounds in the evening, so we had legal permission. I guess we owe him another one. He waited outside of the 1st Academic Building by the flagpole, and said that we should come back at exactly 10pm. I saw Kyla kind of apprehensive, but I patted her head and said everything's gonna be fine. I guess that was the last unsure statement I was ever gonna say to her.
Sir Sev was probably observing the various flashing lights as we scattered all around the building with only our cameras, and flashlights for emergency. I never thought there would ever be an emergency, but I still brought one, just in case. I'm not a very brave person, but I decided to push my limit after seeing Kyla enjoying all the snapping and memorizing the place. Spamming the shutter would leave you out of film, and we only had 50 shots at it. I guess that was the thrilling part, memorizing what you saw after taking a pic, but this was our school, we probably knew most of the way around, and that was what I thought was the reason why everything should have been fine. I tried to be really brave, and went to the allegedly haunted 4th floor. There was room 309, the cursed room where students and teachers see stuff, but I guess schools are the breeding ground of ghosts because of the students and faculty's creativity.
